Despite a sunny Saturday, and a dry Sunday morning, I opted not to go out to ride this weekend. My failure to wake up at a reasonable hour compounded by long list of things to do forced me to stay home for most of the weekend. However, this weekend Malaysia played host to the Formula 1 race, and this meant that I was going to invest at least 5 hours this weekend watching the qualifying, pre-race, and race sessions. Maybe some multitasking is in order?

The Malaysia circuit is 5.54km(3.44miles) long and over race distance drivers on the lead lap rack up over 190 miles in 56 laps. I however only racked up 111 miles this weekend-on my trainer. And while I barely rode over half the race distance, I went farther than both the king (Michael Schumacher) and the killer (Vitaly Petrov) did in the race.

Yes, I had previously claimed that sitting on the trainer is pure torture, but if you watch something engaging on the TV, the minutes/miles do tick by. Compared to going out for a real ride, the trainer will always feel like torture, but if you have plans to park yourself on the sofa for a few hours over the weekend, you might as well get a workout from it. For me, I also got a lot of stretching done before, during, and after the rides. And to reiterate, yes I spent 6 hours on the trainer this weekend.

PS: As a bonus, workouts on the trainer produce awesome cadence graphs. Proof, proof, and more proof.
PPS: Watching Man VS. Food on the trainer is motivating.

Are you getting bored of cycling posts yet? There are plenty more posts to come! Three weeks ago, I started a more structured training plan and am already beginning to feel some change, psychological or otherwise. I am considered to be in the “Base” phase of cycling training, which includes lots of aerobic (high volume, low intensity) rides. My schedule is off/recovery on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and aerobic rides on all other days. On Saturdays, there are often high intensity team field workouts which include FTP, sprinting, and climbing. I follow up the field workout with an aerobic ride. I also try to work in specific pedal stroke and strengthening drills.

In retrospect, I may have overdone the hours/miles on week one, but I felt great after the first week. I didn’t feel fatigued and since I worked my riding into my commute, I didn’t even feel like I sacrificed that much time out of the week. During week two, it felt a little harder to squeeze the miles in, but I was still feeling ok. According to Joe Friel, athletes typically do three weeks of training and recover on the fourth, but Clark recommended recovering on the third week, so I duly followed his advice.

After three weeks, it is hard to say whether or not my fitness had improved. After the first week of low intensity riding, I was genuinely impressed at how little fatigue I felt after riding so much. By the third week however, my legs began to feel tight, which meant that I probably needed to stretch more. One thing I can say is that my cadence has improved noticeably. On long stretches of flats, keeping my cadence above 90rpm no longer seems unnatural, but the improvement was even more significant when climbing hills. Spinning uphill at 90rpm was a revelation. I could go faster and longer. For this reason alone, it would seem like I could do say, OLH much faster, but I’m not sure that would say anything conclusive about my fitness. While I can’t say that I convinced of this “going slower to go faster” base training business, I am continuing my training to see how I can improve. After six more weeks of base training, I can do some more testing and move on to the build phase.

Had they fixed the problem? Maybe. They assured me that my motor was perfect and that the problem was definitively electrical related. They swapped the coil 1 and 3 to see if a faulty coil was causing the misfire. In the process, they discovered that both cylinder 1 and 3 spark plugs, which were replaced by SpeedElement 8 months/1500miles ago, were only hand tight. After tightening the plugs and swapping the coils, the CEL cleared and the problem went away. LIC was fairly confident that the plugs were the root of the problem so I picked up the car to drive home. If the CEL returns with a cylinder 1 misfire, we will know who to blame.

On the way back to SF, I snapped a few photos of the WRX. I haven’t taken pictures of my car in a long time!

But drive it much either. Driving your car, seeing it reflect off other cars and buildings really makes me want to morebuy wheels for it.

Looking at the car also makes me want to lower it more too. I have a new set of coilovers with rear camber plates s hopefully there will be more lowness to come.

March 30, 2010

I rode up to Novato a few weeks ago to pickup my WRX from LIC Motorsports and get a taste of some Marin riding. I had a sprint workout in San Mateo earlier that morning so in the interest of time, I took Caltrain from Millbrae to SF.

I planned to ride with Phil, but he wasn’t feeling great. So after stopping by his place, I headed toward the bridge solo. I wasn’t that feeling fresh either after the sprinting so I was thankful that the wind (and traffic) wasn’t too strong on the bridge.

After riding through Sausalito, I got on this nice path that leads you right to Mt.Tamalpais. I’ll have to check out Mt. Tam sometime. Lots of cyclists were out riding: roadies, mountain bikers, and tourists on hybrids.

I passed by some body of water. Was it a lake, reservoir, or part of the bay? I had no idea because I kept getting lost. I checked my iPhone approximately three thousand times during the ride.

Following the water, I made a left turn and came across this nice stretch of road. The twisty and nicely paved road made me think of touge… except this was closer to a hill than a mountain.

Touge with bike lanes!

On the way back, I checked out the hills near the North end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It looked like such awesome riding… I wish I had time to explore more.

This is how much higher I was compared to the bridge. and there was plenty more elevation to gain.

The view was great too.

We are spoiled by all the good road riding on the Penninsula, but there definitely is some good riding to be had North of San Francisco. Here is the route.

March 25, 2010

After two years of incident free cycling, I finally had my first “run in” with a car. Literally. Yesterday, Wednesday after work at 6:30PM, I was heading Southbound on Moffett Blvd. in Mountain View taking the same route I take everyday to get to and from Caltrains and Moffett Field. I was riding the Felt at a relaxed Z1 pace and had my hands placed at the corner of the tops. I crossed the Middlefield intersection while the signal light was green for the left turners so I cleared all the cars that were continuing on Moffett. Looking down the road, there were no cars, but I noticed a group of cyclists heading in the opposite direction. They made a left turn into the plaza and were likely headed for Los Portales for a post ride bite. After noting the riders, my mind either zoned out or I looked down because as I approached this driveway, a white/silver Toyota RAV4 suddenly turned right in front of me AND STOPPED.

With my hands not on my hoods or drops, I couldn’t grab a handful of brake so I swerved to the right into the parking lot. I heard “F****CK” come out of my mouth and “wOOOOOOH” out of one of the other rider’s right before my leg ran into the RAV4’s fender/tire and bounced off. Yes bounced off. Luckily, the RAV4 left enough driveway for me to ride into the lot otherwise I would have either 1.) ran straight in it or 2.) ran into a curb and endo’d…

Slightly in shock, I looped the parking lot and rode back to the curb. One of the cyclists suggested that I come in for a beer, which wouldn’t have been a bad idea had I not been on my way to meet up with Thomas. The RAV4 had driven off somewhere else in the parking lot, and since I did not really have anything nice to say to the driver, I just rode off lucky to get away without incident.

In retrospect, after totally cutting me off, the RAV4 probably had to stop to yield to the other cyclists going through the parking lot-right in front of my path of travel. I was probably a bit zoned out too, but I suppose I got off lucky… Lets hope I’ve hit my car incident quota for the year.

PS: Did I really write that much (and spend that long writing) about a 10 second incident?

We had another clinic this Saturday – for climbing and descending. I’ll briefly summarize what we went over:

Climbing

Keep cadence above 70rpm minimum

Alternate between sitting and standing

While seated: hands on tops, use hamstrings, open chest for better breathing

While standing: rpm above 70rpm, hands on hoods, do not stick out butt, head and shoulders up high-not hunched over, arms should be mostly straight, bike can “dance” a bit, on the down stroke, keep feet flat instead of toe pointed downward

Cornering

Look ahead, eye on apex and exit.

Hands on drops, tucked very low for more weight on front wheel and control of front wheel.

Exaggerate knee leaning.

We rode over to Canada College for our clinic and the backside has a surprisingly nice and short climb and descent. We started with 4 climbs from the bottom, near Canada rd. to the parking lot at the top. The first climb, we climbed mostly seated and stood up once when we were told. On the second climb, we stood up twice when instructed to do so. On the third climb, we went together as a group and this hurt me the most trying to keep up with Dexter and Peter. Finally, for the last climb we went up at our own individual pace. We focused mostly on technique and posture. Some of the advice is obvious, but you hear the advice differently when you have someone shouting at you when you are doing something wrong. Anyone who got caught standing and pedaling with toes pointed downward was deemed a ballerina.

We planned on practicing the descents on the Southern most side of Canada College, but because the inside of that turn had loose gravel, we practiced on the same road as the climb. We went over technique, but my main problem was my cornering speed. I have known that my cornering speed is slow and because I am not very fearless, so I will have to slowly work up my confidence and comfort to increase my speed through corners. We ran through the corner about 16 or so times.

After the clinic, we rode as a group back to HWY92 and from there, I did a solo aerobic ride to SF to meet up with Nyanko for lunch. My route was tracked by Mr. Garmin. Since we were in the area, we headed over the Mission to grab lunch. For some reason, I thought Ike’s Sandwiches were in the Mission, but they obviously weren’t (ok ok, it isn’t that far from the Mission, but we had a really good meter free parking spot on Valencia!) so we ate at Dosa instead. We have walked past Dosa more than a few times, both on Fillmore and also on Valencia, so today we decided to give it a try.

We assumed their dosa and uttapam would be different from the traditional type (not that we really know anything about traditional Indian food), so we ordered a chaat, dosa, and uttapam.

Honestly, I had no idea what this would be like, but key words that made me order this were small, crispy, potatoes, and puri. Yes Puri, which apparently is not pronounced “pu ri” like Japanese, but “purr ee”, like an American trying to read furigana. That was how the waitress pronounced it, but she could be wrong! When they arrived, we were told the best way to eat them was with your bare hands because, as I soon found out, they sort of crumble and implode into themselves. They were very hollowed little pastries that were filled with all sorts of yogurt, potatoe, and chutney flavor. I liked the idea and the pastry, but I thought there was a bit too much filling, and a bit too many flavors. More potato could have helped too.

Paper Masala A thin, pliable and crispy variation, served with spiced Indian potatoes, onions and cashew nuts

I really liked their dosa. As advertised, it was very thin and crispy and came in one long rolled sheet. The potato filling was on the side and tasted fairly standard, but the dosa tasted great with the coconut chutney and sambar.

Sunny Side or Over Easy Uttapam Tomato, onion & chile uttapam topped with two organic eggs, sunny side up or over easy

The uttapam that we have had in the past was more like a stuffed thicker dosa, but this one had a texture similar to an chinese potato pancake. Although in general it was good, the spiciness was not mixed out well and some pieces were much spicier than others, so much so that it overwhelmed some flavors. It did however go nice with the egg.

Conclusion: Dosa is very flavorful, but it is a bit on the spicy and pricey side.Post ride satisfaction: 6/10

On Saturday(two Saturdays ago), Clark held a short sprint clinic with the Performance Team. I woke up later than I intended to, so I drove to 92 x Canada to be on time. Since the WRX was getting fixed, I drove the corolla and somehow tetris’d the bike into the backseat. I had originally planned to ride there, but there were plenty of miles to come that day… After a quick chat, we headed South on Canada. Since a few of us drove there, we did a nice long warm up – a proper long warm up is very important for sprint drills.

After our warm up, we stopped just a few meters north of the Edgewood x Canada intersection. This is where we started rolling. The course was simple. From the start, we headed northbound cruising at around 20mph. Once we got to the bicycle Sunday sign, we started our (uphill) 250m sprints. How do you know when you’ve reached 250m? On the shoulder, the ground was marked at 100m, 150m, 200m, 250m, and 300m in small white text. When you hit the 250m, shift to your small ring and keep pedaling.

The goal was to aim to sprint to 250m, but minimally sprint to the 200m. A few things I remember us discussing were:

When standing for your jump, your hands should be near the end of the drops so that your pinky sticks out to get maximum leverage.

Use your jump to accelerate and when you spin out, sit down and increase rpms to continue accelerating.

Try to stay aero when you sit down, obviously.

Find the right gear for the course. It may take a few tries for you to find the right gear. Too low and you will spin out, but too high and you won’t have enough power to push it.

Never sprint on your hoods. If you Clark catches you sprinting on your hoods or tops, you owe him $100, seriously! (and not in girl scout cookies)

We planned on doing sets of 4 sprint efforts with 4 minutes of rest in between each. At the end of the set, we rested for 10 minutes and did a second set. Clark had some comments about our sprints. For Martin and me, we had “zero jump”- Ouch. For others, the jump was too wild (front wheel moving around too much). My average top speed for the 6 out of 8 runs was 29.2 mph and my fastest sprint to 30.9mph occurred on the sprint immediately after the 10 minute break. By the 6th run, I was not far from wanting to throw up. On the last run, we did a group sprint with Clark leading us out… except he sort of just took off and dragged us along. Overall, it was a potentially vomit inducing drill, but I felt like I was holding back a bit since I had to ride to Novato after. To properly do the drill however, you shouldn’t be holding back so maybe a bit being of sick is inevitable.